Humans may consider themselves at the top of the food chain, but in folklore there are several predators that are higher, including the chichevache, a chimerical creature that feeds only on patient wives (and is therefore always on the point of starving to death). The creature’s name derives from the French chicheface, meaning thin face, but when Chaucer introduced the word to English in the late fourteenth century, he rendered the word as chichevache on the mistaken assumption that the beast is a kind of ravenous vache or cow. The counterpart to the chichevache is an equally fabulous varmint known as the bicorn, first referred to in English in the early fifteenth century. The bicorn, however, which eats only patient husbands, is traditionally depicted as being plump from its abundance of food. The original French name of the beast was bigorne, which is of unknown origin; when the word entered English it was erroneously changed to bicorn, as if the creature were named after its two horns, just as the unicorn is named after its single cornu, or horn. The earliest depictions of the bicorn, however, are of a hornless creature.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans may consider themselves at the top of the food chain, but in folklore there are several predators that are higher, including the chichevache, a chimerical creature that feeds only on patient wives (and is therefore always on the point of starving to death). The creature’s name derives from the French chicheface, meaning thin face, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c"],"yoast_head":"\n